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Names You Need To Know: Moon Express

You could probably get rich mining the moon if you had a way to get there and back. A Silicon Valley startup called Moon Express wants to sell you the vehicle to complete part of the mission. The company is the brainchild of former NASA scientist Barney Pell, aerospace executive Robert Richards (who is CEO) and Intelius and Infospace founder Naveen Jain.

Other space entrepreneurs want to make rockets to escape Earth. Pell and his team are focused on “last mile” problems, such as a vehicle that can land on the moon and a better landing radar system, which is typically heavy and power intensive. Moon Express is developing a smaller, lighter system that costs a tenth of comparable current NASA technology. Moon Express won a grant from the space agency as part of a $30 million program to fund private exploration of the moon; it’s also competing for the Google Lunar X prize, which will pay $20 million to the first company that can send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters on the surface, and transmit data back to the Earth.

Richards says he’s lining up private and public customers for what he calls a “FedEx for space,” transporting instruments and conducting contract research. “There may be more platinum on the surface of the moon than in all the reserves on Earth.” Far out.

This article is part of an ongoing effort to identify the people, places, ideas, products and companies that are poised to become central to the global conversation over the next nine months. Click hereto nominate your own “name.” The best will be featured in an upcoming issue of Forbes magazine.

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